Editorial: CIA's conduct merits a look, not partisan blame

Friday

Secrets and skullduggery are the CIA's business, its reason for being. So just how secret should our spies be able to keep their business?

Secrets and skullduggery are the CIA's business, its reason for being. So just how secret should our spies be able to keep their business?

At issue are recent disclosures that the CIA was developing ideas for a covert unit to kill top al-Qaida leaders. Supported by former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, the planning had moved in fits and starts since 2001 and was all but canceled in 2004, before being resurrected and put on the slow track again in 2005. When current agency Director Leon Panetta discovered the initiative, as well as the fact that nobody in Congress seemed to know anything about it, he first terminated it, then notified lawmakers what had been in the works.

Some, mainly Democrats, began making noise that the CIA had broken the law by not keeping lawmakers in the loop. They seized upon the claim that former Vice President Dick Cheney allegedly told agency leaders to keep the plans quiet. They see it as evidence that a conspiracy was afoot and want hearings into the whole affair.

Others, mainly Republicans, have made the point that the rules, as they've always been followed for covert intelligence gathering, don't require Congress to be told every time an idea is merely being kicked around. The job is oversight, not micromanagement. As with previous calls for hearings, the GOP is painting this as a partisan witch hunt, an effort to dredge up old news for the purpose of dragging the Bush administration through the mud once more.

Neither side is fully misguided here. The notion that Cheney may have tried to preempt disclosure of the program to those whose job is to serve as an essential check and balance is bothersome, yet there's also a legitimate disagreement over whether the agency was required to tell anyone about its specific actions.

The law - the National Security Act - leaves that unsettled. On the one hand it mandates that the White House keep the intelligence committees "fully and currently informed of the intelligence activities of the United States, including any significant anticipated intelligence activity." On the other it hedges, insisting on "due regard for the protection from unauthorized disclosure of classified information relating to sensitive intelligence sources and methods." The law does permit briefings to be limited to the so-called "Gang of Eight," the partisan leaders of both houses of Congress and of their respective intelligence committees.

Arguably, if the CIA must issue a press release with regard to all of its activities, that defeats the purpose of having a CIA.

In any event, not only is this program no longer secret, its existence shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone. Indeed, President Bush effectively told the country in the wake of 9-11 that we were going to both overtly and covertly try to capture or kill al-Qaida's leaders. We were at war; al-Qaida was and remains the enemy. Surely even Congress could figure that out.

But now the House Intelligence Committee plans hearings on whether the rules were followed on informing Congress in this situation, as well as others regarding warrantless wiretapping and interrogations of al-Qaida prisoners.

It is important that everybody play within well-defined, unambiguous rules, especially when it pertains to operating out of the public eye but still in the name of the United States. Whether any of those rules need changing ought to be part of any debate - out in the open, of course. We'd rather this were about process than mudslinging, anyway.

That's also why we have reservations about a separate inquiry into this CIA assassination program, set to be overseen by Chicago-area Democrat Jan Schakowsky. First, it was apparently never really activated, which makes it something of a moot point. Second, this seems far more likely to become one of those finger-pointing affairs, which is just unproductive. With the nation in crisis, we don't need any more of that in Washington.

Peoria Journal Star

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